


Welcome to the New Year

by ChocoChipBiscuit



Series: Survivor Emily Chen [1]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Chinese New Year, F/F, Loss of Identity, Microaggressions, no slurs or violence but it is mentioned, warning: prewar racism mentioned, what if her marriage had been one of convenience, what if the Survivor was a Chinese sleeper agent, what if we explored that
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-14
Updated: 2016-07-14
Packaged: 2018-07-23 22:20:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7482105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChocoChipBiscuit/pseuds/ChocoChipBiscuit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Emily was a sleeper agent, now awoke to broken dreams.</p><p>(Or: what does it mean to have outlived your purpose?)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Welcome to the New Year

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first time participating in a Big Bang for any fandom, and many thanks to my wonderful artist who you can and should check out on [tumblr](http://melonkollie.tumblr.com/) and [AO3](http://archiveofourown.org/users/sophister)!

“Gōng xĭ fā cái _,_ ” Nate murmurs, standing beside her with his hands on her shoulders. Heavy hands, the hard press of his wedding band a cold weight against her sleeve. They’ve said this off and on to each other all day, but his repeated attempts only remind her how empty the house is.

Codsworth has done his best with the decorations and cleaning, helping Emily sweep out all the dust. As if they could sweep out all the ill fortune of the previous year, of the Americans retaking Anchorage only two weeks before and how Emily’s had to compartmentalize, choke down tears and smile through the brittle-glass pain. Cannot break her mask, even now. _Especially_ now _,_ hyper-aware of her loyalties being questioned, of every action under examination. Pretty little wife of an American hero, and she might have been Chinese but she is _American_ now, he keeps protesting, keeps his arm around her in public as if to shield her from scrutiny. As if to put a protective chain around her, every small kindness an act of possession. As if the sunflowers he put on the table (“you know, most women want roses,” he joked, arranging the long stalks in a red vase) and the oranges he brought home could make up for the friends she no longer has.

The Lee family had to close their shop, between the repeated vandalism and the uncaring police. They had moved only a few months ago, hoping for better prospects in another city. They’d sent one letter, then another two weeks later-- then no letters, and Emily’s own attempts to mail them only had her own envelopes returned, stamped ‘UNDELIVERABLE.’ She’d pored over the official newspaper reports with her hands forced to stillness, scanning every headline and article to see how far the Chinese exclusion zone had expanded, but the papers weren’t talking. Words blurring as the tears rise, impotent rage scalding her eyes as she relied on the whispers of information that Nate lets slip, that his army buddies laughed about between teasing appreciation of his ‘mail order bride’ as she stood, and smiled, and bit her lip until she bled. Painted her lips a precise crimson, kissed Nate’s neck in a smear of pigment and imagined it was him bleeding instead.

The Gu family fared little better, David Gu losing his job and his wife Agnes selling their garden produce and eggs from their backyard coop on the black market, exorbitant prices under the current rationing system but still not enough to keep their grossly inflated bills in check. Then the police came, and despite the speakeasies that roll off everyone’s lips and mouths (like liquor from a bottle, like poisoned words and cruel stares, like jeweled toxins slipping under her skin) of course it’s the ‘illegal’ vegetable stand that requires arrests, discipline, warnings. ‘Making an example’ for the community. She thinks of them every time she chops onions for Nate’s omelettes, eyes watering. Thinks of them when scrambling eggs, fork chiming against the bowl as she beats them with a splash of milk. Thinks of them as she buries herself in forced domesticity, minutia piled over her like loose earth.

They aren’t the only friends she’s lost. Ruth Greene from the law firm crawled into a bottle, never found her way out. They’d been partners, before the military expanded into all other aspects of this American life, crept out like a fungus, like a mold, like black rot setting in. A civilian law firm has only so many uses when the law is a broken thing. (And Emily resents this too; she learned their words, their laws, their language, only to find they twist and break everything so easily.) Donald Perez cut off contact after coolly telling her that it risked his professional reputation to maintain confidences with a person ‘of possible Communist sympathies.’ Not even the grace to look her in the eye as he shuffled his papers, clicked them against his desk like filing a death knell when she stopped by his office to invite him for lunch.

And her family-- she hasn’t seen her sister Ning in years, much less received any letters. Not since the war, not since Emily buried herself in this new life, planted her roots deep so she could sink herself into the bones of this country. Still sees Ning in her mind’s eye, that shy half-smile she always wears with her chin tilted down, her hair in short braids that brush the shoulders of her green army uniform. So proud to serve the People’s Republic of China, even with her lashes heavy with salt as they embraced one last time, before Emily adopted her new name and went to the United States for her own mission.

(And in the dark moments of the night, when sleep weighs heavy on her eyes like smooth stones, like coins to pay passage to the land of the dead-- she wonders if Ning had gone to Anchorage, if she had been in one of the suicide squads. If she had fought the Americans, exchanged rifle fire in the snow. If she had met Nate’s unit, if she had killed one of Nate’s fellow soldiers, if Nate had shot her in turn, if Nate killed her sister, if, if, if…)

Empty thoughts, rustling like dead leaves. She forces a smile, brings herself to the present moment as she peels a tangerine. One long, graceful curve of peel, like the games she’d played as a child, where she and Ning would compete to see who could get it off in one piece. (Emily had always won, always with surer hands and patience, her tongue bit between her teeth as Ning bit her lip in furious concentration.) The juice bursts tart in her mouth, faintly sour. Washes away the lingering taste of cold chicken and noodles, the few dishes that Emily had the heart to prepare for this empty Chinese New Year. She would have made fish instead of chicken if the water contamination weren’t so high, but she reads the reports from the Nahant Oceanological Society (because even now, even with her heart brittle and her mouth ash, her anxieties creeping out at night like spiders, she remembers her duties, compartmentalizes and keeps her notes and files in neat array like cloisonné) and that sickens her too much, too much to do more than half-heartedly entertain it as a possible means of suicide, of murder, of preparing steamed fish with scallion and ginger and praying Nate chokes on the sharp-edged bones, that it punctures his throat and seeps poison into his blood.

Instead she pulls apart the tangerine segments, white membrane clinging to her fingers. Like a sun in slow destruction, little bursts of fire as she passes a piece to Nate. He sits next to her with a heavy scrape of the chair, smiles that wholesome white smile with his orthodontist-approved teeth and his stubble catching blonde in the light.

“Emily, are you okay? You’re awful quiet,” he says.

The words rise up like water, like tears, like the tides in check. _I am always quiet_ , she could say. _I received the best marks in stealth training from the Baoding Military Academy, I could move like a shadow across the moon but wasted my years and training here with you, waiting for my handlers to give me the word, to tell me to do more than slip pieces of information and guard schedules to the dead drop_. _There are oceans in me you do not know. You see only my sun-lit shallows._

Or she could slip to more personal, gut him with a few well-chosen words, harsher for their truth. _I am always quiet,_ she could say. _You only ever notice when it affects you, when you crave my company and want to think that I love you, that I miss you, when you feel lonely and want my loneliness to touch yours._

Instead, she says, “I wish my friends could have made it.”

Nate pulls a face, wrinkles bracketing his mouth and suddenly, vividly, reminding her of all their arguments over whether or not to have a child. _We’re not getting any younger_ , he always says, so reasonable. So soft, a choking fog of gentle pleading. _Codsworth would love having a little one to take care of, and now that we retook Anchorage, this might even be a turning point in the war, maybe, so I could be home more--_

But bad enough to live through lies, through half-truths and mirrored deceptions. Worse to bring a child into it, worse to bind her own flesh and blood to this country that would never see them as truly American.

“I’m real sorry, honey. I know it’s not much, but I bought you a little present,” he says, another scrape of the chair as he goes to a cupboard and pulls out a sleek bag, the kind from the cosmetics or fragrance section of a higher-end store. Black ribbons for handles and peach-colored tissue paper that crinkles as he puts the bag in her hand.

She forms the expected moue of surprise, covering her mouth with dainty fingers and setting the bag on the table. The soft, creamy scent of some luxurious soap, a tiny vial of spicy perfume with top notes of cinnamon and clove, and a little pot of hand cream. All wrapped in that peach paper, which she now notices is flecked with red. Like fresh blood, like blood on snow, her hands shaking now as again she thinks of Ning sprawled backwards, eyes glassy and unseeing and glittering like the perfume bottle as Nate stands over her with his gun, scattered casings still hot and melting tiny pocks into the grey slush of the battlefield…

“This is lovely. Thank you,” says Emily. Lashes low, head tilted forward. Modest and grateful, as she is for everything else her husband provides her. Sleeves carefully pulled long to cover the silver-thread cuff scars, the better not to burst this domestic fantasy that she is anything but a prisoner in this country.

He grins, pulling a chocolate gold coin from the candy dish at the center of the table. Peels off the foil and bites it in half, chocolate waxy on his teeth as he chews through his words. “Only the best for my baby.” Eyes adoring, hand clasped over hers like a prayer, like religion--

And she knows with this dull certainty that he treats his love like religion, as if he can find salvation in it. As if love will wash his hands of all the blood he’s spilled, the dirty works of his hands and his nightmares, the things that occasionally shake him enough to leave the warmth of their shared bed and sit at the kitchen table, brooding. Always telling her to go to bed when she slips after him, but always accepting the warmth of the tea she makes for him. Always ending in stabbing prickles as he clutches her close, tells her she’s the best thing that ever happened to him and if only, if only, if only…

But Emily was never anyone’s salvation, least of all Nate’s.

. . .

When the bell rings, Emily seizes the excuse to pass Shaun to Nate. Answers the door with a practiced smile.

The man in the suit smiles back with far too many teeth, flashing like rows of tombstones clicking shut as he laughs, pitches his voice loud. As if volume means translation, as if she didn’t speak English.

“Hello! Is your husband home?” he asks, wearing that false smile and yellow jacket, hair glinting red in the light. Hands neatly groomed, clutching his clipboard-- nails unevenly cut, but otherwise soft hands. Clean hands, unused to manual labor. His voice slow, sticky. Tarry in her ears. “I represent Vault-Tec, and I--”

“What is your business with my husband?” she asks, cutting over him without raising her voice. Scalpel-soft, slips her words like a blade between the ribs. Her English perfectly spoken, her accent worn away with careful training, tumbled smooth like stones in a riverbed.

The Vault-Tec representative visibly starts, eyebrows high and mouth forming a shocked ‘O.’ She resists the urge to flick it shut. “Just came to sort out your enrollment in your local Vault! With your family’s distinguished service to our country, you are--”

“Honey, who’s that?” Nate asks, emerging from the back room with Shaun nestled against his shoulder. Picture-perfect papa of the year, even if it’s only babysitting. When the neighbors had come over pleading an unexpected family emergency (sick mother, and Emily reflects that with Professor Brown out of the house, she might have left her notes behind on the government project assigned to her research division…) Nate leapt to offer to watch their young child. Smiled at her afterwards, exclaiming it would be practice for their own.

(And Emily smiled, nodded, pet the child’s soft head and contemplated the vulnerability of those unclosed fontanelles. No malice, but no nurturing either.)

But with Nate’s appearance, Emily is shut out of the conversation. Like a glass door sliding shut as Nate hands the child to her and the Vault-Tec man addresses him, not even bothering to make eye contact with her anymore. So she sits on the couch, listening. Sifts through their words, because even the smallest details can be of importance.

Basic registration information, names, number of adults, where to report to the local vault-- not that she hadn’t been aware of its construction. Not like it’s easy to hide a project that size, especially when it’s practically in everyone’s backyard.

“Mum, perhaps I could prepare you some tea?” Codsworth asks, bustling towards her with a blast of fuel. Sensitive to her needs-- more so than she would have suspected, with his original programming-- or at least having adapted to her preferences. She nods, and continue listening half-heartedly as she rocks Shaun in her lap. He drools, dribbling down his chin, and Nate turns from his conversation to pull a clean rag from his pocket, handing it over her shoulder.

She wipes Shaun’s face, coos him to some half-drowsing sleep by the time Codsworth returns with a cup of jasmine tea. Hot and sweetly fragrant, steam wreathing her face as she breathes deep-- wonders if like the night-blooming flowers, she can only truly open in darkness.

Errant thoughts, angled poetry that Shaun chases away with a sleepy burp.

When the Vault-Tec representative leaves, Nate takes Shaun from her lap. Bounces the baby, smiles at her with an unspoken question: _Isn’t this wonderful? Don’t you want one of our own?_ His face soft, a gummy-sweetness that sticks to her teeth.

Emily smiles back, lowers her lashes and lets him think what he wants.

. . .

They make it to the vault as the sky bursts in smoke and flame, the world above retreating in a symphony of sirens. The overhead doors shut off the light, leaving Emily’s last glimpse of the sky as a thing of ash-whiteness, a shard of horror.

Nate puts his arm around her shoulders, kisses the top of her head as Shaun wails. Their unexpected burden, their unexpected gift. One more life in this vault, one small thing preserved against all odds.

(Nate had pulled rank to get Shaun into the Vault, barked orders at odds with the crying baby in his arms. Hissed, “We are on the _list_ ,” as he rattled off all the reasons that one life should be saved, one small piece of hope against the world that’s fallen around them. Why one small child should not be so taxing on the resources of a well-designed vault…)

She shivers, presses herself close to him. The cool whirr of metal-tinged air washes over her skin, raises prickles on the back of her neck. If the bombs truly fell, if China struck first, then the United States will surely retaliate. If the United States struck first, then this is vengeance. If there is a China to survive, she has to keep her wits about her, has to keep her memories sharp, has to watch and learn and cannot let herself sink into this numbness, shock and grief.

(If Ning is not dead, if Ning was on the Chinese mainland, if the bombs fell, if, if, if…)

Faces beyond recognition, white coats without identification. No name tags or ways to distinguish these vault personnel, and that stabs suspicion down her spine. She changes into the offered jumpsuit, follows obedient and docile to the decontamination pods. Counting her steps along the way, watching the forks in the hallways, the branching routes. Counting breaths, counting the lives around her. Assets, allies, resources and hostages if need be.

(She has no weapons besides her hands and wits. The most important tools in her arsenal.)

The decontamination pod closes about her like a coffin. Across the aisle, Nate smiles, waves from inside his own pod.

He's the last thing she sees before the ice fills her lungs.

. . .

She emerges to a bright world of warm sun and wild silence, the breeze soft with water and the smell of green and growing.

(Nate is dead, along with so many others. Her wedding band weighs heavy on her hand, the gold untarnished after all these years.)

Emily explores the area, searches for signs of life beyond the overgrown cockroaches. Steps over the long-abandoned skeletons, left unmourned and unburied. Examines the glowing fungus clinging to the trees, yellow phosphorescence almost lost beneath the bright sun.

The thing that disturbs her most: the observation station overlooking the vault, a lean-to built against a tree with a few candle stubs and cartons of dirty water. The white-chalked marking is hardly discreet, but might be overlooked as graffiti in a less isolated location. The meaning remains hidden, even if the sign is not.

(Hope against hope: she survived the years. Did her handler? Did any other members of her cell? Were they hoping she’d emerge, untouched and still ready to serve? The codes could have changed…)

Hope chafes against hope, rattles in her pocket as she returns to Sanctuary and the wreckage of her old life. She finds Codsworth miraculously-- inexplicably-- still functioning and alert. Grateful for her return, shocked and dismayed-- and comforting, voice processing unit quavering with intangible emotion as he mourns her loss. Mourns more loudly than she herself, since he was _programmed_ to obedience and she was only trained in its simulation, and Nate was never her beloved, and Shaun was never her child--

Excuses, clicking down like the beads on an abacus. If China is dead, she has no purpose. She was a sleeper, now awoke to broken dreams.

So she fits her purpose to Codsworth’s suggestions, and goes to Concord.

. . .

The raiders die, ill-trained rabble against her superior skill. Even rusty, even out of practice-- it’s muscle and memory and bone. Knit in her flesh. The ways to step silent through the streets, wear the shadows like a second skin. Steady aim and steel nerves, one shot and one kill.

(A lie-- it takes two and three, the rust flaking. Practice, practice. Hardly a qualm as the raiders blossom blood and gore. She loots them for bullets and keeps going.)

She rescues Mr Garvey’s little band of survivors, introduces herself as ‘Ms Chen’ instead of her dead name. No more use to that role, so she discards it.

They walk from Concord to Sanctuary, a trailing line with Garvey and Emily at the lead, Dogmeat trotting at her side. Jun follows, assisting Mama Murphy as Marcy keeps watch with sharp eyes and a sharper tongue, her words etched acid with grief. Sturges guards the rear, gentle with his ‘ma’am’s. Kitten-soft despite the bulk in his shoulders.

(Too much like Nate, and there are monsters lurking in those depths. So she pulls back, gives him wide berth.)

Mr Garvey walks heavy in the power armor, a gift of necessity rather than altruism. The suit’s too large for her small frame-- the metal shell had been enough to shield her from raiders, the deathclaw, guarded her hands and left her no bloodier for the effort, but it slowed her reflexes, dulled her senses. So she lets Preston stomp ahead, his tread shaking the earth and sending pebbles flying. Makes him the bigger target as she slips along, camouflage by distraction. Old lessons rising up like bodies from a river.

Codsworth accepts the new arrivals with a surprising gusto, some long-nurtured subroutine spurring his drive to play host. With his limited purification systems still intact, he offers pure water as refreshment, and they work to rebuild shelters for the night.

The years distorted the familiar surroundings, still a surreal dreamlike quality to the silence, to the crumbling houses and the picket fences knocked over, like pale fingers clawing in the dirt. Sturges and Preston pull apart the fallen wood, set up at the workshop and start patching holes and building beds in the more-intact houses. She walks through the bones of her old home and the neighbors, finally at liberty to rummage without fear, to discover and expose all their secrets.

(But this is knowledge without power, information that cannot be used to bribe or sway the outcomes of the war. With everyone dead, she has gone from spy to voyeur.)

She picks through old safes and hidden cache, scavenges medical supplies and learns the unsavory details of her neighbors’ various addictions. Could have been blackmail, once-- instead helps direct her search.

Emily circles the houses one by one, methodically picking up items of note, cataloguing what might be useful for the settlers. Useful to have a home base with grateful defenders.

Codsworth whirrs behind her, the soft gust of jets announcing his presence. “Mum? I heard the others refer to you as ‘Ms Chen.’ Reverted to your maiden name already?” And it might be accusation under that metal-tinged voice, or grief written in algorithms.

She bites her lip, confession sour on her tongue. “It was until death do we part.” She closes her fist, knuckles tight and jutting. Gold ring gleaming. “I can barely carry the weight of my own name, Codsworth. To you, I’ll always be-- who I was. But I cannot carry myself as Mrs--” and she stops. Even that admission too much. Even centuries later, even after Nate’s death, she cannot escape his name. It’s bound inside her bones, climbs tendrils up her throat.

“Mum, I-- I apologize for my insensitivity. I understand the grief is still fresh, and I apologize. You have always been the epitome of kindness and I should not have doubted you.” He bobs in midair, his equivalent of an apologetic bow.

“If it makes you feel any better, you are always free to call me Emily.” She smiles, tilts her head and relaxes her hand. Nails dug red crescents into her palm. “Of all people, you have earned it.”

“Thank you, Ms Emily. I appreciate your trust, and assure you I will not presume to be overly-familiar with it.”

She smiles again, nods. A practiced mask, sweet-faced and gentle. “Thank you, Codsworth.”

Emily excuses herself to scavenge her neighbor’s root cellar, private and secret. Face blank, still processing. Death hangs like a heavy fog, but will not halt her progress. Even after centuries, her original assignment has not changed-- fit in. Gather information. Survive. The factions may not exist, but survival is still paramount.

The amateur bunker is well-made enough that her neighbor must have spent time on it, more so than the typical ‘weekend warrior’ doomsday prepper who thought a pistol and a tinfoil suit or armor built out of football gear would help them survive the apocalypse. She gathers the bars of gold more for curiosity than marvel at their value, picks up a bottle of Gwinnett Stout and crinkles her nose in disgust. Never a fan of beer to begin with, she doubts the centuries have improved the flavor. She slips a half-pack of cinnamon gum into her pocket, one small indulgence she never expected to see.

Ammo, food, weapons-- the true surprise is the memorabilia, a folded American flag and a tin of dog tags. She does not bother checking the names on the tags, lets them slither and rattle as she sets them aside. In a shoebox, she finds Nate’s letters.

Strange to think how such a personal item had been hoarded, but Nate was always the local hero. His letters would have been collectable, even if she was destined to be only a footnote in his history.

She sits on the edge of the bedframe, the wood creaking beneath her weight. Fans the letters over her lap, forcing herself to breathe slow and deep. Inhales the sweet-parchment smell of old paper, memory tinting it with traces of his cologne.

He’d always loved writing letters. A sort of meditation in motion, clean black ink spilling across a fresh page, his meticulous, tall lettering always slanting slightly to the right. She’d studied his words, parsed his phrases--traced his alphabet with her fingers, with pencil. Set herself to forge his letters as needed.

(An unnecessary precaution, in the end.)

He would slip small tokens in his letters home-- pressed flowers, a clipped photograph, a pretty feather. He’d write poetry on the pages-- always with a sheepish grace, an apology that he was quoting dead men’s words instead of penning his own.

“ _But you deserve the best, and I know my best isn’t always good enough. So I hope Yeats will do_ ,” he’d written, once. But never confined himself to Yeats alone-- he’d collected Neruda, Shakespeare and Whitman and even as she read most of their books in those long days of domestic confinement (because how much cooking, how much cleaning, how much training with her pistol, with her knife, could a forced housewife _really_ do, especially with a Mr Handy to lighten her few duties and the need to keep her un-domestic activities clandestine?) it became a game to find the work he quoted and to welcome him home with it, to press soft lips to his ears and sing poetry like prayer.

(But she was never his salvation.)

She bats away the memories like errant moths, the dust choking her throat. All his little trinkets gone, the paper yellowed with age. But she sets the letters in chronologic order and ties them with a ribbon, old promises stacked whisper-thin on those fragile pages. They rustle like leaves as she walks back to her old room and slips them beneath her mattress, a reminder that regret rises like the summer grass.

. . .

“Codsworth, do we still have our old go set?” Emily asks, sitting straight-backed in a wobbly chair. She leans forward to set the uneven leg flush on the ground. Tilts her body, makes her favor one side, but better than the instability of perpetual motion.

“Yes, mum. Would you like to play a game?”

Emily nods. Some sense of normalcy as Codsworth brings out the wooden board, the smooth grain gleaming sweet and golden as she pours the stones in a smooth stream of clicking pieces. Codsworth offers her the pick of color, and she taps her fingernail against a white stone.

“We are both over two centuries out of practice,” Codsworth chuckles, a plummy reverberation that makes his optics shake. She tilts her head, watching him--no face in the sense of a human opponent, but the dents and rust he’s sustained while maintaining guard in Sanctuary give him a more distinct character. Emily suspects it’s a combination of his own social programming, that cordial loyalty, in addition to the ‘personality’ gained by no longer looking like a Mr Handy fresh from the box. An undeserved sentimental attachment.

A shadow stretches over the gameboard, a man’s polite cough to announce his presence.

She does not bother turning her head, still studying the board as Codsworth clicks his piece into place. “Yes, Mr Garvey?” Neither inviting or dismissive. Let him read it as he will.

“Ah-- Ms Chen, I was wondering if I might sit and watch.” His hat in his hand, carefully formal in a way she has chosen not to discourage. A sweet man, kind-hearted and idealistic. A martyr in the making, a more cleansing immolation than the bombs that shook the world. Few shadows on his heart.

Emily nods, setting her white stone on the board.

. . .

It becomes a new normalcy, strange and bitter. Like over-steeped tea, a reminder of how things _could_ have been, if only. If only.

She joins Sturges and Preston in rebuilding Sanctuary, plants tatos and mutfruit with Jun and Marcy. Dirt under her nails and on her knees, a broad sunhat to shield her face as sweat slicks down her back and under her arms. Sleeves rolled down, despite the work-- no need to explain herself any more than she already had, no need to exhume old history.

She tries addressing Marcy in Mandarin, a soft “nĭ hǎo?” that only earns her a blank glare. Emily smiles, tries Cantonese.

“You want me to understand? Try English,” Marcy snaps. Swipes the back of her sleeve against her forehead, leaving a smudge of yellow dirt near her hairline. Shoulders tight, everything under pressure. All her grief channeled to anger instead of this futile search for something that might be long-dead. But languages don’t die of old age-- they die through genocide and assimilation.

Sanctuary might be her once and current home, but it was never her homeland.

Codsworth salvages a pair of old work gloves, lets her shield her slim fingers and delicate nails. Dirty work but clean hands-- a habit she tries to keep into this new life, scrubbing with a sliver of yellow soap, foaming it to a thin lather that she scrapes into her palm. Even finds her old manicure set, miraculously intact. Maintains her hands with the same diligence as her old 10mm pistol, the one that Nate purchased ‘for her protection’ and she had to pretend unfamiliarity as he wrapped his arms around her, breath warm in her ear as he instructed her how to shoot, how to hit what she aims for.

(“Honey, don’t be afraid to pull the trigger. Don’t worry about shooting to wound, just aim for the center of mass. If someone tried to hurt you-- hell. Rather be tried by twelve than carried by six.”)

At the end of the long day, she retreats into the skeleton of the old house, night thick with ghosts. Memories she can’t escape, trailing behind her like a line of corpses. Emerges with the go board, immerses herself in the strategy on a small scale. A simplified form of combat, settles her spirit as she contemplates her next move.

After two nights of watching Emily and Codsworth play, Preston coughs-- polite as always, big man afraid to take up space-- and asks if he might try. Hands behind his back, chin tucked into the fold of his scarf. As if still afraid she might pop like a soap bubble, disappear if he blinks.

“I might be a slow learner, Ms Chen. I’ve only played chess before. And here, all the pieces-- well, it’s simpler, at least. Less moves to keep track of.”

“Chess presumes some pieces have more value than others. It is a game for heroes,” Emily says, face serene. Lashes downcast, watching Preston’s hands.

He grips his knees, leaning forward on his seat as he bites his lip. “Surprised you don’t prefer chess, then.” Even now careful to respect her boundaries, to stay on his side of the line she’s drawn about herself.

Emily laughs, a careful-metered sound. Quirks her mouth-- closer to a smile than she’s dared, some days. “I was never a hero. But through correct timing and placements, some positions-- some pieces-- become critical in a game of go. But we do not presume one piece is of more intrinsic worth than another.” A spate of words, exhausting as they deflate her lungs. “This is why I prefer go.”

There are other advantages, of course-- things she teaches him when he asks, drawing a grid in the dirt and using smooth pebbles and mutfruit seeds as stones. An egalitarian ease of play, compared to the entire mess of chess.

. . .

“What is the most important thing to remember in go?” Mr Garvey asks, rubbing his thumb over the stone in his hand. A cool and inky blackness against the warm brown of his skin.

Emily chuckles, knees tucked to the side as she tilts her head. An artfully poised artlessness to it, calves tense. Even now watching the exits, the windows, points of entry. _If I were sent to infiltrate this settlement, how would I do so_?

Instead, she says, “That is like trying to compress a lifetime into one defining moment.” Bites down on her gum, cinnamon hot in the back of her throat.

Mr Garvey chuckles ruefully, tugging the brim of his hat. “I guess I’m just showing my ignorance.” Sits with his knees angled out, toes towards her. Even now sits balanced as if ready to leave, and it would take one word to dismiss him.

“No,” she surprises herself by saying. “Ignorance is an unwillingness to learn. You simply have not learned yet.” She taps her hand against the board, wedding band chiming off the wood. Lifts her chin to meet his gaze. Square on, eyes clear. “Go is a game of strategy, not tactics. It comes down to three principles.” She extends her fingers one by one, ticking them off. “Expand your territory. Attack your opponents’ weaknesses. Monitor the lives and safeties of your own forces.” Bares her teeth, a smile of knives and edges. “But no individual piece is worth more than any other. That is why, as in chess, we occasionally sacrifice the smaller groups to ensure a larger victory.”

Her entire self sacrificed for the sake of gaining position and agency-- and now isolated as a dead eye.

The stone burns against her palm.

. . .

“So you were a lawyer, before? Enforcing the law?” Mr Garvey asks, eyes bright. His kindness glints off his lashes, his skin-- lit up like a lantern from within.

The purity of him scrapes her raw, brings all her stains to light. Watermarks, indelible on her soul.

“No, arguing it.”

“Arguing for justice?”

Emily shakes her head, tucking her knees together as she places her white piece. Shaping to surround his forces, though he’s distracted by a lesser encounter at the corner of the board. “The law is itself, not justice. Any more than a scalpel, itself, performs surgery.” She brushes a strand of hair behind her ear, an unnecessary gesture with her pins in place. “Though it is a clumsy analogy. The law was never evenly applied to all people at all times.”

“How so?” he asks.

She studies the board. Easier to watch his pieces than his face, observe the steadiness of his hands. “Your group named themselves after the Minutemen. How well do you know your own history?” Not ‘her’ history, though she studied it. Past shapes future, echoes lingering through the present. She had sought meaning in understanding.

His hands do not shake. “Of the Minutemen of the Commonwealth? Fair enough. Or do you mean the older history?” He taps a black stone into position, forming the second link in a chain.

She clicks her words down like stones, weight decompressing from her gut. “We need not go as far back as the original Minutemen. But after America fought for its independence, the Chinese had come to seek gold in California and to build the Transcontinental Railroad that formed the backbone of transport at the time. This, despite having no legal right to bear witness against white citizens.” Emily smiles, a practiced mask because a sweet face can soften bitter words. “Essentially, making white violence against Chinese unprosecutable.” The white stone glows in her palm like bleached bone. “Our history was… not the same as yours. But it was _ours_ , regardless.” Still tastes like ash, like rage blown cool. Present echoes past, history creating its own ripples and shaping endless tomorrows

Preston nods. Black stone cool in his palm. “I noticed-- reading some of the old books, they had glorified the older wars. They called the revolution a great ‘war for independence.’ The Civil War was pitched as bittersweet. Brother against brother, a national tragedy. States’ rights.” He keeps his hand open, fingers splayed. Voice unwavering. “Easy for some, to brush off past injustices. To call the perpetrators ‘products of their time,’ or people who were ‘on the wrong side of history.’” His eyes meet hers, warm and dark. Like the hollow of a lover’s mouth. “Little harder when you’re someone who would have been affected by it.”

“History is written by the victors. Or at least the victors with access to the press. They get to tell their own versions of what happened.” Her smile widens to a grimace, then drops. A sudden, quiet shatter. “Following the American Civil War, the United States granted naturalization rights to ‘free whites and persons of African descent.’ Please note there is no mention of other races.” A pause, tapping her finger at the edge of the board. “This was in 1870,” she adds as an afterthought. Habit from quoting legal history. Emily sets her piece at the end of his chain, barring further expansion.

Preston studies the board. Raises his hands, breathes into his cupped palms to warm them. Still attentive, a vibrating expectancy to his broad frame.

She waits for him to speak. A few breaths of silence before realizing he is waiting for her to continue. Waiting to _listen_ , rather than taking the excuse to share his own expertise.

(More courtesy than Nate ever gave her.)

“In 1882, the government passed the Chinese Exclusion Act. It made the Chinese in America permanent aliens, excluded from US citizenship and an ocean away from our homeland.” She waits as he makes his move, allows a silent pause before making her own. “This was later expanded to include _all_ Asians in the Asian Exclusion Act of 1924.”

She now has two chains of white stones, and will soon be able to connect and encircle his line of dark pieces. If she were Mr Garvey, she would at least try to create a few protected eyes within that contested territory, but then again-- Mr Garvey is still learning. She will review his errors with him later, if he requests. She sees no need to advise him to victory while they are still competing.

He wets his lips, a questioning crease in his brow. “But you were an American, right? Before the bombs fell?” Places his stone with a hasty click, distracted from the game at hand.

She smiles, crescent-edged and sharp. Thinks of old histories, the Japanese internment camps and the dry dust of Manzanar and the scraping winds. Not ‘her’ people, truly, any more than the Americans were, but finer points of nationality were lost during the war. Easier for so many to lump all East Asians under an umbrella.

“You are skipping ahead, Mr Garvey.” As is she, though she won’t be the one to tell him. “It was not until 1952 that the US abolished racial restrictions on immigration and nationalization.” Waits a few breaths, a studied pause before she makes her move. “And not until 1967 that the Supreme Court overturned the bans on interracial marriage.”

Preston makes no further attempt at pretending attention to the game, leaning forward with his hands on his knees. Trying to sift the lesson from the truths, his body language written loud in every line of his form.

”I was, and am, _Chinese_.” An evanescent truth, meaningless without a China to return to. “I lived in America. I acquired my American citizenship, but my face still marked me as ‘other.’” Carefully does not rub her old scars, does not trace her thumbs over the butterfly-pulse of her wrists and the ghost-weight of too-tight handcuffs. Instead focuses on meeting his gaze, the brown skin about his eyes crinkled with the purity of his focus. “I think it must have been harder for my friends who were born in America, having never known any other home.”

“Mum, you know that sir always thought of you as American!” Codsworth exclaims, an agitated whirr as his optics rotate. “I do apologize for the petty-minded brutes of the time, but it was hardly--”

Emily shrugs, lets Codsworth continue his stream of apologies and forgivenesses, all the words to alleviate his own guilt without acknowledging her truths. Allows him to make another cup of tea, though the leaves have lost most of their flavor. At this point it is little more than tinted water, barely enough to settle the ghosts in her lungs.

. . .

Preston asks her to visit the settlers at Tenpines Bluff, and she does. Takes Dogmeat with her for company, walks through the dead echoes of the world before the war. Every abandoned railcar a possible ambush, every empty house a reminder of another life made hollow, another home stripped away.

She pauses at the abandoned train station, breathes deep through her nose. Dry rot of dead ghouls, hot metal of sun-baked shipping crates. Notes and signs of life, another white-chalked marking and a hidden cache. Similar ray of lines, but a different symbol at center-- a square, a box, a different meaning than the one outside the vault.

(And she wonders if she is not the only ghost.)

Emily answers the request for aid at Tenpines Bluff, agrees to track the raider gang to the Corvega assembly plant. Mercy or madness, to take on an entire gang in unfamiliar territory-- but she has the training, she has the skills, she would willingly have infiltrated Fort Hagen itself if she had been given the command--

Breathe deep. Mind still. Deep waters without ripple.

She and Dogmeat circle Lexington, take out the roaming ghouls as she eyes the pipes leading into the facility.

(And as she enters, splashing through stagnant waters, she sees another white-chalked marking. An X at the center of the radiating lines. Danger, do not pass.)

Dogmeat guards her exit, gives her one less route to worry about as she goes in.

This is assassin’s work, not mercenary-- she stays in shadow, eases about the outskirts of the assembly floor and drops frag mines. No sense in announcing her presence until she reaches the high ground. Has to slit a guard’s throat to get there though, the blood spraying across her face. Death’s own warpaint.

She creeps up the stairs as one of the circling raiders triggers her frag mine, an explosion that has their leader running out with a wild yell. Completely focused in the wrong direction as she pushes the button, extends the metal walkway and eases behind him with her pistol raised.

Not a silent kill, though. He sees her shadow, smells his own looming mortality, perhaps, and turns in time to scream. Raises his gun and smashes into her ribs before she twists, landing on her wrist at an awkward angle but shoots anyway, a rapid click-boom into his knee, his gut, his face--

Mission accomplished.

Emily checks his terminal and disables the security. Walks out the way she came. Gives Tenpines the good news.

She returns home to the ruined house, though the wind no longer whistles through the walls, and the stars no longer watch her sleeping through holes in the roof. Another game with Preston, which he loses-- but he is making her victories dearer, making her measure the cost in time and stones.

She is starting to measure the price in time and the rare smile, the way she forgets the weight of a dead man’s ring on her hand.

But in the hollow darkness of the night, she still reaches for a warm body next to hers. When the green rain rattles off the roof, when the dampness hangs electric-sticky in her lungs, she bundles the blankets around her, goes to the kitchen and makes tea. Still reaches for a second mug. Clicks the chipped ceramic against the counter, sets it back in the weathered cabinets. The night echoes empty without him breathing lullaby against her skin.

It’s still not love-- was never love. She never married for the butterfly-pulse of her heart, never married because she wanted to twine their bloodlines or bear his children. But his absence haunts more than his clinging presence ever did.

. . .

“You see mum? Beauty does still exist,” Codsworth exclaims, hovering to the side of his newest floral arrangement. Emily had brought home a mostly-intact white willow vase, the blue porcelain pattern still bright and the one chip discreetly covered with a tendril of fern. Codsworth took her gathered hubflower and carrot flowers, used mutated ferns for accents. The resulting picture soothes something buried deep inside, lifts a shroud from her lungs.

“Thank you, Codsworth. This was very thoughtful of you,” she says, voice tight. Twisting the ring around her finger. Even now, as if the ring will cap off any excess emotion. “I-- please sit with me. I know this might be difficult, but this is a conversation we need to have.”

He had taken her reverting to her maiden name with a surprising amount of understanding, understood the weight of her continuing to bear another name as a walking gravestone, a monument to memory. But to remove Nate’s ring--

“It was until death do we part.” And here they stand, oceans away from her homeland, and him gone across the ferry to the next life. If there is life after death, if it’s something more than fever-dreams and lies tumbled sweet with desperation. “And every time I see the ring-- it only reminds me, and it re-opens the wound. Better a clean scar than this bleeding thing,” she says, the ring heavy in her palm. Weighs her down, tethers her to the false life and name she never wanted, only took on because she knew her duty, knew her role and played it to the hilt. Even when it hurt, hurt just as much to be mistaken for a native citizen as an immigrant. Scars still thin on her wrists, pale ribbons over the blue-thread veins. “I still respect him.” Truer than love, because she will not lie to Codsworth more than she already has.

(And she does respect him; at least no less than she did in life, and perhaps forgiveness is easier with him gone. Whether or not he killed Ning, he now lies dead. And Ning likely died centuries ago as well, leaving only Emily to carry their lives inside her, like dead seeds without hope of fertile ground.)

“There are many things which I owe him.” Her citizenship. Her home. Some genuine moments of happiness, a cozy intimacy over coffee and pancakes. “But I cannot wear his ring.”

Codsworth whirrs in distress, one of the curved panels of his central chassis vibrating. “But mum, do you really want to leave it behind?”

To leave it would be the same as letting go-- but there is no greater freedom in it. Sincerity is not the same as truth.

So she shakes her head.

Emily and Codsworth scavenge a leather cord, a long strip of cloth from the sleeve of one of Nate’s old shirts, and a red ribbon from her old jewelry box, the color still bright. Softened with age, but a satin sheen in the warm sunlight. She braids them together with steady hands, strings the ring on it, and knots it around her neck. Token symbolism of the three in one, but she knows the true strength comes from the leather cord, one last piece that Nate cannot claim.

(And Shaun was never her child, never Nate’s-- maybe finding him will exhume the last of her guilt. Nate had saved Shaun’s life by taking him into the vault, always shouldering burdens that were never his-- but Emily can finish the job. One last task, one last mission before she can freely wear her own name.)

. . .

Preston asks her to lead the Minutemen, says he knows tactics and discipline but cannot inspire--

She shakes her head, shutters her heart. “You do not know what you are asking.”

“I know that you have already done so much for us. You have drive, charisma, _strategy_. I am the last Minuteman, and if anyone can bring the Minutemen back, I know it’s--”

“Preston. You do _not_ know what you’re asking,” she repeats, gripping her cup with white knuckles, her old codes and loyalties all jutting out and angled inward, a needle-trap she can’t escape. “I cannot-- I cannot promise my loyalties forever. You know where I come from. _When_ I come from. I cannot--”

“Miss Chen, this is-- this is your timing. This is your placement.” His hands raised like prayer, his eyes burning sweet as incense and he’ll choke her with his kindness, with his words, and she cannot let anyone do that ever again--

“You do not understand. I am not a hero. I was _never_ a hero. I was never anyone’s salvation, Preston.” Mug raised to her face like a shield, hands shaking so hard the ceramic rattles her teeth, the words jittering out and she’s going to break like glass, like waves, like all the dreams she lost while trapped in frozen sleep.

“You said it yourself. There are no heroes, just-- positions that become important.” Begging with his eyes, a greater cruelty than all her words turned against her. “Please.”

 _I am not your hero, I am not your savior, I am no-one’s salvation. I carry my sins like burning coals within my belly_ , she thinks, but confines herself to a one-word answer. “No.” _Do not mistake my sun-lit shallows for all that I am_.

She refuses to be his General, but the title is less important than the purpose. She struggles to keep the settlements outfitted, requests supply lines and maps out routes. A long goodbye in the making.

. . .

She is lost-- an echo without a source, a ghost without a home. Long outlived her original mission, now nothing but wan intent stretched taut on too-small bones. If she finds Shaun, perhaps she can exorcise her guilt before she fades to shadow.

(She is fading anyway-- finds safety in stillness, retreats from offered company. Dyes her vault suit to something that will let her fade from sight, a black that stretches dark grey in dappled sections of uneven dye. Codsworth offers to help re-dye it, but she refuses. Too true a black can also draw unfriendly eyes.)

The road unfurls before her like a ribbon, a path that winds her south and east to the gleaming jewel of the Commonwealth. (And through a devastated Super Duper Mart, another white-chalked warning outside, as if she needed any warning to expect lurking ghouls and tatter-pieced tragedy.) Standing outside the old Fenway Stadium, she clutches her hands to her belly and holds back laughter that crashes like the tides.

The woman in the red coat wears her colors like a challenge, eyes bright and probing, and Emily washes her own face into gentle blankness as Dogmeat whines beside her. Emily enters the city without further incident, shying away from Piper’s request for an interview. Piper seems like the sort who wants to analyze, probe, understand-- would pull apart a clock to understand its inner workings, leave the gears and glass smudged. Not understanding that not all ticking things are timepieces, that some are bombs yet to explode.

(Emily lingers over Nat, Piper’s younger sister-- thinks of some of the mixed children in prewar Chinatown, small hands in their mothers’ and sucking on ginger candies, eyes wide and faces shimmering red under the lanterns strung overhead. Wants to ask, but. But. What does it even mean to be ‘Chinese’ any more, to these people who have distorted their history? Better to move forward than to dwell in the mistakes of the past.)

Dogmeat does not ask, does not probe. Only whines for simple companionship, butts his head under her hand and stays close, a warm presence as she mist-walks through the city. A strange and distorted dream.

She finds Nick Valentine, rescues him-- ‘damsel in distress’ he calls himself, but no more distressed than she is to discover he holds prewar memories as well as she does. A flinching bite, held forever on the back of her tongue-- an expected kick or off-handed comment, a held breath she hadn’t realized was trapped in her lungs.

Finally, he tips his hat and says, “Ms Chen. In case you haven’t noticed, I’m a synth.” Faint whirr of gears, eyes glowing yellow in the shadowed darkness. His wire-framed hand curls, uncurls. Glints in the light, tips sharp like the promise of blood. “I think we both know what it means to be ‘one of the good ones.’”

“Is it that obvious?” Emily asks, sitting on the edge of his desk. Cigarette smoke soft against her skin, a stale comfort as he exhales. Nicotine can’t do anything for that collection of gears and servos he calls a system, but habit is its own addiction.

Nick shakes his head. “Not to anyone else who didn’t have the prewar--” and he halts, crosses his ankles, “--understanding, shall we say.” Smiles, and it is so strange to read an expression that has moving lips, a tug of the supple metal skin on one side, and the gaping hole on the other. “And I am a detective. I’ve been learning to watch people.”

Danger, danger. Red lights and flashing signs, warning in the yellow-lit smile he gives. She was never meant to be watched.

“I would have remembered meeting someone like you,” she says instead.

Nick leans forward on his elbows with a weary sigh. Raises his brow, creating a furrow that wears almost into a dent. “This might be a conversation that requires coffee.”

She cradles the mug in her hand for warmth more than flavor, occasionally taking a deep sniff to let it fill her lungs. Like if she carries it inside her, it can fill out her hollow gaps.

Nick Valentine-- he carries the name, but was not the man. Has grown into it, carries the memories but has his own experiences. Roles and identities in shuffle like a marked deck of cards, and she wants to stick out a finger, tap down and pin it in place. Tell him: “this is me,” an exchange of confidences.

Everyone else who might have cared is dead though.

She outlived her role.

There is no _point_.

So instead she smiles, nods, thanks him for his time.

Walks to the privacy of a nearby alley, footsteps without echo. Dogmeat by her side, pressed against her leg, an anchoring warmth against the chill threading her veins.

Trembles.

. . .

Shaun is a guilt and a burden. Finding him is to set Nate’s ghost to rest, so she can unbind herself from the ring around her neck. Even Codsworth will consider her marriage expiated.

So she goes through the motions, tells Nick what she recalls and investigates Kellogg’’s abandoned house. She crouches in front of the home, pulls one of the pins from her hair and clicks the tumblers. Steady hands, breathing slow. Her own breath rasping over her upper lip as the first bobby pin snaps.

She reaches for the second, jostling the wedding band she still wears around her neck. The metal weighs heavy on her skin, cold and cursed as a lodestone. All her roots torn, but this is the one tie she has to the world before, even if that one tie is a lie. An endless chain of memory and blood and guilt, family and homeland and customs and now she is the last.

(One horrific thought: after all these years, could taking Shaun have been vengeance for her prewar allegiances?...)

She dismisses the thought as the lock clicks open. Anyone who did enough research to discover her role would have also realized Shaun is not her child. She wouldn’t have been ‘the backup’ but the primary target.

Emily mist-foots her way over the thick layer of dust, breathing in the smell of ash and metal. It’s been a long while since Kellogg set foot in Diamond City, and when she investigates the upstairs loft, there’s no baby crib. A bed, a mattress on the floor. A coffee pot on an old hot plate. Two unchipped mugs, their insides stained brown and dark rings near the lip.

“How old was Shaun?” she asks, thoughts trickling like grains of sand in an hourglass.

“Ten or so,” Nick says, drifting around the house. His skeleton hand taps the walls, a careful-metered ticking. “It’s been a few months.”

Questions upon questions. Time, position, strategy. “Why would a man kidnap a child from a Vault, go through all that security, and then… raise him for ten years? What about his employers?”

Nick shrugs, a maddening half-gesture in that tattered trench coat. “If I could tell you, I would. If he’s working for the Institute-- well, no one’s ever understood why they do what they do.”

Spaces don’t add up, pieces don’t fit. Neither does this house. Feels like pocket litter writ large, rather than anything to give an actual sense of the man that killed Nate and took her not-son. But the floors are too small, and she and Nick split up to case the room. She finds the hidden switch under the desk, presses it to reveal a sliding wall.

Dogmeat trots to investigate as Emily follows Nick through. She loots without guilt-- spare ammo, purified water. Provisions that Kellogg didn’t have time to take, or was expecting to return for.

She lingers over the beer bottles and an empty box of San Francisco Sunlights, one half-smoked cigar still sitting on the ash tray. She picks up the box, wafts it in front of her nose and inhales the rich tobacco smell that still lingers.

“Hey, Dogmeat. Think you can track this?”

. . .

Nick offers to join her, but she demurs. Those yellow eyes are too haunting, light up too much she’d rather keep in shadow. So she says goodbye, shakes his hand-- firm, both of hers around his, careful not to recoil at the bare metal of his skeletal hand-- and leaves with Dogmeat.

Kellogg is obviously a professional, much like herself. She had never been activated, but if she had been given the command, could she…?

 _We were just following orders_.

Another excuse, blood and ash on her tongue. Her own hands are unclean, no matter how many times she washes. No wetworks ops, and every kill since she emerged from the vault has been in self-defense or against unambiguous enemies. But only because she had never been activated.

(Will never be activated, now with no handlers and no China to return to.)

She follows Dogmeat to Fort Hagen, slips to the roof and quietly disables the turrets guarding the perimeter. All tasks she would have gladly done before the bombs, if the opportunity had presented itself-- strange to think of how much easier this is, in so many ways. An enemy base with prowling sentries, mechanical men firing lasers. If she gets caught, she can simply shoot them and not worry about destroying her cover.

Once inside, she sets frag mines and stays to the shadows, hugs the walls and crouches behind overturned desks. Follows her own programming, much like the synths she destroys.

Just following orders.

She intended to take Kellogg alive for interrogation, but kills him instead.

Accidents happen.

Guilt is a wasted emotion.

. . .

Goodneighbor hits her behind the solar plexus, a rush of light and fumes. Lit like Chinatown, dirty and _alive_ and this feels like home, pulls echo from memory and she thinks--

 _Yes_. Never mind that the faces on the streets are a diverse swath of color and ethnicity, never mind that none of them can track home to homeland, never mind that this is not and will never be home--

Here, they would light the fireworks. Here, they would beat the drums and drape the costumes over a line of revellers, sway and weave through the streets in echo of a lion dance. They might not understand the history, would only stumble-foot through the steps-- but easier to imagine a Chinese New Year here than in Diamond City’s carefully-groomed facade. Because _this_ is somewhere that echoes its history, chews it up and spits it out in a machine-gun fury of goodwilled anarchy.

It does not even hurt anymore to find more prewar people, though the ghouls carry the weight of history on their skins-- reminds Emily that time has passed, and they don’t care, they don’t _care_ anymore.

It does not even hurt to find the old Vault-Tec representative, to let him vent his fear and frustration, let it wash over her like breaking waves. Stronger and more stubborn than she would have given him credit for, but when he snaps about having had to get to the future the hard way, she lowers her voice. Gives a brittle-edged smile, her mouth burning with cinnamon as she bites her gum behind her teeth.

“If this future is hard for you, I suggest living in the past.”

(She spends as little time as possible living in Kellogg’s memories, the strange world of neurons and blank spaces, freezing voids and isolated devastation. Everyone has their reasons. It never excuses their actions.)

. . .

The Institute is shadows and rumor, long games without a clear goal.

(And with every settlement that Emily recruits, she thinks of a line of go pieces, a click of stone on wood as she claims the board.)

She meets Piper in Diamond City, taps her toes against the stall--her feet won’t reach the ground when she sits on those stools-- and twirls noodles on a fork. Savors the warmth of the salty broth, tinted red with pepper paste and chili, takes cold sips of sour beer as she listens to Piper try to explain the horror of synth infiltrators, Piper’s ink-smudged fingers flashing like startled birds as she points, fans her hand and moves her whole body for emphasis. Piper rants about their stealth, their hidden motives, the fact they could turn at any moment and the heart-clenching paranoia that your neighbor, your friend, your lover has been replaced by a synth--

 _What if your lover had been an infiltrator all along_? Emily wonders. Dabs her lips, wipes away the guilt that threatens to spill out. Fingers the ring around her neck.

Does not ask.

That is the last time she officially meets Piper. Journalism is only as good as its source, and Emily has other leads to follow.

. . .

Sturges modifies a power armor frame, scales down the endoskeleton and custom-fits it to her size. Suitable for a long trek.

The traders warn of the Glowing Sea’s radiation, so Emily loots old gyms and rec centers with ruthless efficiency. Brings Preston along to carry the heavy prizes, and Sturges helps her line the suit with lead.

Strange, this-- she cannot hide, cannot blend from sight. Only walk, tall and heavy, announcing her presence with every footfall. Trust her power armor to shield her, metal tang bitter in her nostrils.

(Never trusted armor, never trusted other people’s hands, their arms, their skill-- could never build her comfort from others’ bones, never force herself small enough to be carried. Always preferred to never be hurt, protection through deception. It only hurts if they catch you, after all.)

She can’t take Dogmeat, shouldn’t take Dogmeat. Already misses the dog more than she ever thought possible, kneeling on the frayed carpet and burying her face in his ruff, the warm dirt and soft fur and green-crushed scent of the bushes, a few yellow leaves still clinging to his fur. But she has no radiation suit for puppies, if they exist at all.

But when she stops by Diamond City, Nick-- Nick with the questioning eyes, the old world memories and the new world chassis, smoke drifting out the broken half of his ruined face-- Nick offers her a cup of weak yellow tea and his company.

“Rads won’t bother me, and I still owe you for that rescue,” he says. Hat tilted back, and she can’t decide if it’s more unsettling to see that yellow gaze straight-on or with the glow seeping around the brim.

She curls her hand around the cup, ankles crossed as she sits in the chair. Her suit of power armor to the side, because no sense in stomping around the office with it. “Don’t you have cases to work on?”

“Nothing current. Old files and dead ends. Things to keep the cobwebs out,” he says, tapping his forehead with a faint plastic chime. “Bit of a transition period.”

Emily sighs through her teeth, the barest whisper of sound. Quirks her eyebrow, raises it and smiles, small and sad. Even now remembering her mask. “Transition-- to find that one woke up and all one’s memories are two centuries out of date?” She shakes her head, leaning into her cup’s rising steam. “That is one way of putting it.”

And as a sleeper agent… it was long and dreamless, as close to death as she’s ever come. Forgotten or marked dead already, if anyone had even bothered checking for her.

Nick nods. “I woke up in the trash heap. Disposed of.” Holds up his skeletal hand, looking at her unblinking through the wires. “Didn’t recognize my own body. But you know, talk with enough people-- do enough good, they start doing good back.” Curls his hand, sets it on his leg. Smoothes down over the knee, as futile an effort as any without a proper ironing board. “Home is where you make it.”

. . .

She finally decides to take him along-- a companion who need not sleep and is immune to radiation would be a definite boon-- but keeps her confidences to herself, stacked and hidden in orderly lines, thoughts clicking together like mahjong tiles. A solo game has no true victory.

(But neither does it have loss.)

So they venture into the Glowing Sea, the air thick with green clouds of radiation and her Geiger counter ticking ever-upward. A constant tension between whether to take her next dose of Rad-X or to keep her helmet on, shield herself from what radiation she can.

She does not know how it is a ‘sea’ without water, but there are monsters in these depths. Even in her clumsy armor, staying low and circling dead trees and boulders helps them avoid the deathclaws that stalk the area. A monstrous radscorpion bursts from the earth when they stumble into its ambush, pincers clamped on her arm as she frantically whacks with her machete. Nick swaps his habitual pistol for a shotgun, fixes on the vulnerable eyes and pulls the trigger. Once, twice-- and she shakes it off, stumbles back.

Rattles small within her armor.

Rattles smaller when meeting Virgil, even in her armor-- all her extra height and bulk means _nothing_ next to a man whose fist is bigger than her face, no matter how tattered his coat or how ill-fitting his glasses.

But he has the information he needs, and she promises to help him stop being a monster.

(Wonders if there is any hope for her.)

. . .

To kill a Courser is not something to rush. So Emily follows other pursuits, gathers equipment and helps clear the roads for the settlements.

Emily and Dogmeat follow the Freedom Trail, red bricks and paint over scattered debris and the ruins of historic Boston. Emily taps her boots against the crumbling pavement, thinks _there’s no place like home_ and wonders how China has fared. If Ning survived, if Ning is a ghoul, if Ning was deployed to Anchorage or is back on the mainland, if, if, if…

Turn back to the present, the path broken like so many blood-sworn promises.

(And another white-chalked warning at the Boston Common. A battered swan boat floating in the pond at the center, and even now, across the months and distance, Nate haunts her. His shadow beside her and the memories thick and choking. Picnics in the park, crushed grass beneath their blanket as they drowsed in the afternoon sun…)

She avoids conflicts where she can, slips on shadowed feet past super mutants and raiders. Cleansing the area is not the current objective.

Finally she finds herself at the ruined church, her suppressed 10mm pistol warm in her hands. She’d prefer her laser if she had the fusion cells, prefers the cleansing burn of red light and the way the singed air tingles against her skin, like something blasphemous and holy. Makes for cleaner kills, the immediate cauterization limiting the mess of blood and gut.

But fusion cells are expensive.

The church is crawling with feral ghouls; hardly a surprise after having spent months exploring the Commonwealth. Hardly a challenge either.

Emily disposes of them with ruthless efficiency, careful shots with her pistol as she stays in the slanted shadows of the church. Any gray, unmoving bodies get shot, just to be on the safe side. When one starts lurching to its feet from beneath a splintered pew, Dogmeat lunges on it with a growl, pins it down as she pulls out her knife. No sense in wasting a bullet.

She wipes her blade on the ghoul’s tattered clothing, turns her gaze overhead to the shattered windows, the church-motes dancing in the light. If she breathes deep through her nostrils, she can mingle scent and memory, pretend the choking dust is the fragrant smoke of burning joss sticks. Can pretend this is the silence of meditation, not the silence of the dead.

There are spaces, both hallowed and liminal, which have brought her to her knees in wonder.

This is not one of them.

Emily and Dogmeat follow the lanterns, slip through the catacombs beneath the church, tread long-forgotten paths. Air thick with unfamiliar mineral, a cloying coolness as she steps past shards of bone, over fallen stones. Vaguely feels like she should have more guilt for disturbing the dead, but the air is thick with ghosts, and she is but one more among them. Should have died years ago, if. If, if, if.

(Here, she is one more shadow among the rest, an empty vessel for regret.)

At the end of the tunnel-- and there is more, she’s sure of it. A hidden bunker, a place for retreat and supplies. A passcode for one last defense, one last barrier against any strange tourists or waywards ghouls. This is her destination-- knows this like the beat in her veins, the taste of her teeth. Knows this, blood and bone.

Knows the password too, blood and bone. Spins the clicking disc to spell out ‘railroad,’ and the door opens to a dazzling light.

When challenged, she responds carefully. Studies faces and weapons, the frisson of recognition at the bland-faced man in sunglasses-- how long had he been following her? How rusty is her countersurveillance?-- and slots them into roles, identities and priorities.

But god, it’s the silver-haired woman with the minigun that pulls hymns from her chest, that stands glorious and resplendent in the light, a thousand backlit hallelujahs that sing praise against her teeth. Devastation through affection, the same soul-shattering magnetism Nate claimed to have felt for her.

(But she has learned through his bad examples, the lessons she’s lived and the secrets she’s kept. She will not allow herself to mistake attraction for mirrored affection or think that she can wash away her guilt in another’s heart.)

. . .

Emily trades names like coins, strings them around her neck like beads. Her given name, her American name, her married name. Whisper is one more, clinking musically with the rest. A windchime symphony of gentle lies and deceptions.

‘Whisper’ is her codename, though a silly enough code when Deacon obviously already knows who she is, if not who she was.

There is purpose, here. There is a goal. Living in one another’s pockets, selves compartmentalized and shadows blurred, and each safehouse is its own independent cell, each operative feeds to a greater whole--

Whisper escorts a newly-freed synth to safety, tracks down dead drops and treks through old horrors, thinks about the difference between ‘house’ and ‘home’ as she investigates the now-dead safehouses.

(Thinks about the difference between ‘marriage’ and ‘family,’ how her deep cover isolated her from anyone else she might have cared for, how her husband was never her partner.)

But she climbs the church tower with Glory, lies on the roof and stares skyward. The velvet night lit with diamonds, a jeweler’s fortune in starlight. Washes her face in a spill of moonbeams.

“What do you see when you watch the sky?” Whisper asks. Because this is a small question, only one of the many she’d lay like roses at Glory’s feet, only one of the many ways she’d love to learn Glory. Glory is beautiful, confident-- replete and intact. Completely aware of who she is and where she stands. Brilliant and blinding. Whisper only dares to steal pieces of her in glimpses, like hasty peeks through pocket-mirrors, never daring to look upon the whole.

(Because Whisper has spent so long as Ms Chen, as Emily, as Nate’s wife, it’s been so long since she was the girl who graduated from Baoding. All her selves a patchwork quilt to cover the person she once was. If she stands too long next to Glory, it will only fray her stitches. Rinse her shadows out to light.)

Glory scratches behind her ear, snorts with a shake of her head. “Stars. Don’t know the constellations-- well, a couple. North star, Big Dipper. Desdemona told me those three in a row are some hunter’s belt. Man in the moon.” Slants her chin, twitches her foot so her toes just graze Whisper’s. “Why, do you see something different?”

Whisper catches her breath in her teeth, trains it to a laugh. “I was never one for astronomy. I know some of the names-- the zodiac, some of the Greek and Roman myths, but can hardly point them out. The Milky Way.” Thinks about the story of the weaver girl and the cowherd, but that’s too tender to share, too soft for this still-budding relationship. “The rabbit in the moon,” she says instead.

“Rabbit? Always heard it was a man.”

Whisper chuckles, shrugging so her shoulders chafe into sloping roof. “See the shadows a little different-- and then it’s a rabbit.” Extends her finger, moving close so her hair fans over Glory’s, their arms flushed as she guides Glory’s sight. “Ears, facing sideways. Mixing the elixir of life.”

“Looks like a bunch of shadows to me,” Glory grunts, turning her head so her breath rasps over Whisper’s ear, a charred caramel sweetness to like bourbon and salt and a thousand sun-drenched memories that threaten to sweep out like the tides…

“They’re all shadows,” Whisper says. “No ‘real’ man, no ‘real’ rabbit. Just shadows on a distant rock orbiting our lonely planet.”

Optical illusions and perspective-- Emily and Whisper. Shadows.

(But Glory’s hand in hers is solid and warm. Whisper can trace Glory’s lifelines, rough-cut knuckles and broad palms, in ravines, cliffs and valleys, a cartography of flesh. Emily silently wishes her long life, good fortune, a thousand and one joys that are so much less than Glory deserves.)

. . .

Emily returns to Sanctuary with Deacon, re-examines all the white-chalked markings and recognizes them for railsigns. Caches, warnings, aid-- new terms for her lexicon, meaning made explicit.

He talks too much, and about all the wrong things-- disruptive camouflage, draws attention to his sunlit shallows. Nothing of depth, all his deceptions tumbled smooth with repetition. Roles and covers worn into grooved habit, safer than harsh truths.

Preston welcomes them with clasped hands and a radiant smile, Sturges with a friendly wave and an appreciative smile at Deacon, a quick head-to-toe glance and then a more lingering study.

When Deacon wags his eyebrows in response, Emily excuses herself back to her old home.

She finds Codsworth cutting bars of soap with a butterknife. A new batch of fresh-milled soap, luxuriously smooth against her skin and enriched with a creamy blossoming scent. He works meticulously slow, scrapes together all the fragmented slivers into a small tin and twirls his optics to greet her.

“Welcome back, mum! Here-- a token of appreciation.” He whirrs his way to a kitchen cabinet, pulls out a white soap medallion carved with sunflowers, petals etched in perfect clarity and polished smooth.

Emily laughs in startled delight as she traces her thumb over the dotted textures, the soap cool in her hand. “This is lovely, Codsworth. Almost too lovely to use.” Curls her fingers over the edges. “Thank you.”

“Tsh, mum. I can always make more. A greater shame to let it sit immaculate and untouched.”

She washes her hands with ritual ceremony. Foams lather across her knuckles, between her fingers, slicks clean the lifelines of her palms. Her heart opening like a sunflower.

. . .

She has no sun.

That’s the inane homonym that rattles between her ears when she first meets Shaun, or Father, or the man that claims to be her son. All his names worn whisper-thin, flimsy as a cloak of shadows. A special sort of hubris in claiming paternity when he was abducted to be little more than a test subject, then redefined his humanity through a failure to recognize the humanity of the people he’s created.

(And she thinks of an infant without parents-- Stockholm syndrome in his early milk.)

Reasons aren’t excuses.

The Institute is an eerie twilight of bright lights and scheduled shifts, divorced from the cycle of sun and moon. Clean-swept halls and sterile brightness, utilitarian efficiency. When Emily washes her hands in her private quarters, she raises her palms to sniff the white lather. No scent. Washes her clean, but no nod to human comforts.

(She leaves the water running, uses it as cover to search for any listening devices that might have been left in her room. Does not find any. Either they are incompetent in monitoring her, or she is incompetent in discovering them.)

She takes her first genuine shower since coming out of cryo, the water one shade shy of uncomfortably hot as she rinses, scrubs, shampoos. Brown water swirling down the drain with every motion, dark footprints against the tile as she stands on one foot, then the other, scrubbing her soles with a sponge. A ritual cleansing as she emerges, slips into a bathrobe and her role as a double-agent.

Emily smiles and mouths their beliefs, lip-service without breath. Recaptures the errant synth (and strange and comforting, to think that synths can be just as ‘human,’ just as capable of horror, as any human), puts on as good a show while dodging through the chaos of Bunker Hill. Her hands in service to her mind, calculating odds and splintering possibilities as she walks that tightrope of hidden loyalties.

The only thing that threatens to crack the ice around her heart-- X6-88 standing with squared shoulders, hands cupped in front of him to present a slim red box. He tends his hands as meticulously as she does, with squared nails filed smooth and his hands never truly relaxed, always poised to be used as a tool, as a weapon. Even his small injuries patched and bandaged with ruthless efficiency, as if afraid to damage Institute property.

(Glory is a hymn in motion, a devastating glory of words and action. X6-88 is a held note, deep and sustained-- a hushed cathedral of infinite possibility.)

She nods her head in gratitude, takes the small box. Opens it, cinnamon wafting to her nose as she examines the foil-wrapped treasures inside. She offers him the first stick of gum, but he shakes his head. Only accepts the second stick after she’s popped the first into her own mouth. 

They chew in companionable silence, breath burning flames.

She almost regrets how she will shatter his world.

. . .

She’s still not sure what sent her chasing monsters in the ocean.

(May her own monsters stay long-buried.)

But she left Dogmeat with Donny and swam from the sun-lit shallows to the weed-tangled periscope. Immersion without cleansing, kicking across deep waters with her mouth closed, green salt drying on her lips. Hair swaying about her like water-weeds before she pulls herself up, sets foot on the metal body of the submarine. Blood singing chill recognition as she climbs into its depths.

She had never served on a submarine, but.

There is a ghoul in an old uniform, his features desiccated beyond recognition. He introduces himself as Zao, but she does not dare to hope except for his accent, his _words_ , and when his English breaks, slipping into his native language and apologizing for the lapse, she whispers in the same tongue,

“Finally, someone else who speaks Mandarin.” The words unlock half-realized fears and uncertainty, relief flooding her veins. The syllables caress her lips and tongue, homecoming in every brush of breath.

He starts, eyes widening and his mouth opening in a lipless smile. Fine lines of wrinkles on that dry skin, like her favorite uncle. “Why are you here? The war is over. Long over.”

‘Why’ implies purpose, something more certain than the loose-shifting sand that makes up her being on most days.

So she shies away and asks, “You came from before the war too?”

“How did-- you see what I have become. How did you survive?”

She smiles, small and sharp and bleeding, and the ocean threatens to spill from her eyes but she will not, she will not break. Not after so long, not when so close. “I was a sleeper agent. I was… asleep. For a very long time. I only found out the war ended a few months ago.” She clenches her fist, smooth nails biting into her palm. Blanched crescents, knuckles jutting, and hope tastes like blood and steel and tears and she would give up on finding Shaun, even now, that last lie that bound her to her old life if she could just-- “What happened to China? What happened to our _home_?”

He sighs. Long and weary, weight of the world settling on his shoulders, compressing his lungs.

(Her breath remains trapped in her throat. Hope’s a heavy chain.)

“I have not received any communications since the bombs fell,” he says, like a confession. Her heart beating time, each throb bleeding echoes in her ears. “The Yangtze is not seaworthy, or I would have returned already. This is not where I belong.”

“What if,” she begins, and her mouth tastes lead-sweet and treacherous, her heart crashing against the cartilage of her ribs and everything shattering. Swallows, tries again. “What if there is no China?”

“If China is gone, I will build. House by house.” Simple, easy.

In her mind, she sees settlements rising, sees water purifiers built of steel and scrap. Sees humanity claimed from the wreckage, sees gardens full of hubflowers and missile turrets standing sentinel on the highest homes.

(Preston seated across from her, placing stones on a wooden board.)

“And if no houses can be built, I will die. My peace,” says Zao, firm and without hesitation.

“Aren’t there still things worth living for?” Because she would give her life, if necessary, but cannot imagine throwing it away. Grasps for purpose like an iron brand, would still grit her teeth and ignore the searing flesh if it means branding herself for a higher cause.

Zao smiles, eyes soft with pity. “I have already lived two centuries. We might be from the same time, from the same homeland, but you-- sleeper agent. You have lived with the Americans. You have been asleep so long. Sleeping is not living.”

The China of her memories was a decade out of date, even before the bombs fell. Styles, trends-- popular shows and songs on the radio, the streets of memory altered by traffic and relentless construction, old graffiti washed away and painted under new layers.

Now over two centuries in ruin.

(Uncharted maps, uncertain cartography-- ‘home’ is less familiar to her than the geography of Glory’s smile, the landscape of their intimacy. The gates of the Baoding Military Academy waver in her memory, distorted as if viewed through thick waters.)

. . .

She goes to Saugus Ironworks for Zao’s dampening coils, treks the long path and maps settlements and supply-lines, tangles herself ever-deeper into the Commonwealth as it is. Every new person and conversation a gossamer-thread tie binding herself to this new-made home, the land that’s claimed her despite all her best efforts.

(Visits the Railroad on her way back, picks up another MILA and talks with Glory. Spends one hour, golden and resplendent, leaning against the cool stone walls of the catacomb and talking, talking. Every word a tripwire tease, heart’s snare as Glory snorts, shakes her head, runs ragged nails against her scalp and gives that wrecking-ball smile that shatters Emily to the core.)

She gives Zao his supplies, treks into the belly of the submarine to finish his repairs. Already knows she won’t be going to China with him.

She’s been sleeping under glass, no charming prince to the rescue. Swallowed down poison, smiled rose-red and stepped from darkness into light.

She knows the difference between home and homeland.

So she revisits the Railroad, enters the Institute one last time as a double-agent.

. . .

“Gōng xĭ fā cái,” Emily-- Whisper-- laughs, the air sweet and dusty with carrotflower as she bites into one of Graygarden’s hothouse oranges. Aromatic and bitter, a spray of juice across her nostrils and white pith wedged beneath her nail as she pries it open, peels the rind in one unbroken whole. “Happy New Year, Glory.” Emily passes a segment of orange and bites into one of her own, wincing at the incredible sourness.

Glory snorts even as she pops the entire segment into her mouth. Gives an orchard-blossom smile, grinning around the pulp stuck between her teeth. “That was two months ago.”

Emily shakes her head, smiling. Pulls a red envelope from her coat pocket, only slightly crumpled. Fingers pressing citrus oil into the paper as she slips it into Glory’s hands. “Chinese New Year. Lunar calendar.” Laughs again, tilting her head to allow her hair to shadow her cheek. “The one that counts.” Pulls another gift from her pocket, shaking the cardboard box and grin widening, crescent-moon smile as she says, “Want to make some noise?”

“Is that a come-on, Whisper?” No more hidden meanings and layered intentions, free to be as open as they want in the privacy of Emily’s new-claimed home in Diamond City. The eye of the storm, safety in the most anti-synth community of the Commonwealth.

Emily bites her tongue between her teeth, crossing her eyes with an exaggerated sigh. “Glory, glory, hallelujah. You make everything into innuendo.” She thumbs the box open like a book of matches, revealing tiny twists of paper packed in sawdust. “Bang snaps, nothing dirty.” Raises an eyebrow, lips shaping an invitation. “Though that can come later, if you like.”

“And here I used to think you were _quiet_ ,” Glory grumbles, shaking her head. Raises her hand, miming a shove into Emily’s shoulder, but Emily side-steps with a ghost-laugh.

They both remove a paper twist, the thin material crinkling beneath their fingers, and throw them at the ground. The paper bursts on impact; tiny explosions, controlled destruction. Small and bright, crackling loudly through the night.

Best Chinese New Year that Emily’s had in two centuries.


End file.
